Preemie

Today was busy. Started by going w/ a nurse to visit a very young mom and her preemie, little Kelly, who at 5 weeks is still only 4.5 pounds, but when she was born she was 3 pounds something. She's just soooo tiny and precious, only 17 inches long. Little Kelly's been in the hospital a while and Mom Inez is still lactating, so the nurse was requested by the hospital to go do a home visit and help Inez get used to nursing, since she's had trouble nursing. Well they have these really cool nipple things nowadays that help babies nurse who are too used to the bottle. So in the back bedroom that baby started nursing really well! Hopefully Inez will continue. Inez' young husband was there too and he was so in love with both of them. There were other people sleeping in the front room of the apt., you know people kinda bunch together and live under a roof, laboring here and there. I really hated that apt., the carpet being so grimy and soiled and nasty. The place would be better without a carpet. It was yucky. I hope little Kelly never has to touch that. She's so precious!
This afternoon I had to go to court. Second time for this family. The man is a construction contractor. He makes lottttts of $$$$$. He's the one who pays laborers a few bucks an hour but reaps in big, big profits. Well he's lying on his taxes, too, and the lawyer says she's gonna prove it. But today was about child support and custody of the ex-girlfriend's 2 little girls. I had met with the little girls and the judge last week. Anyway the lady has a friend who is very into prayer and is a very evangelistic Catholic woman. She accompanies her in these custody visits. She helps people tremendously despite being hurt by a drunk driver some years ago which caused lasting injury (and has not received remuneration- gee, since when is justice served in every case?) The girls' mom also has severe knee injuries. This terrible guy just threw her out on the street, his own daughters too, didn't even give her enough time to get the girls' clothes. The woman was absolutely destitute. She went to the church woman and the church really, really helped out and is very charitable. She took the lady and daughters under her wing. Well today the guy's been order to pay a sum I think is tooooo low, but it is something, per month, retroactive to when she filed for support. Gets partial custody but we'll see how it goes. There's a meaaan ol' stepmother involved, too, whom the mom doesn't want her girls to have contact with. But she had to bite her tongue. The lawyer was pleased with me and took my card and gave it to her brother who owns a business and would like interpreters for many of his workers, too.

So I have generated business from Rough (contracted us to translate manuals), from this lawyer, from other places. But one place has told Gerry they didn't like how I did. I know this person. And I think he's wrong. It was a simultaneous interpretation. I worked with one of these people, from MRSI, on the diapers, which went well. And the client still P&G. But the ones who hired us were different, not MRSI like last time. Well for some reason this client wants to pay less, they wanted to pay less from the beginning. I don't even know what they have to do with the study since all they basically do is provide the room to have it in. Well the MRSI, same guy I worked with before, said I summarized too much rather than word for word and that I wasn't aware of cultural nuances. It's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. The MRSI guy must have told that company because now they're complaining about the price. And we are the lowest price out there. The cultural nuance thing is stupid, there's nothing to that. Split ends are split ends. And the interviewees were from all different cultures anyway- Guatemala, Peru, Mexico. People from Peru talk and carry themselves differently from Guatemalan Indians. But it's irrelevant here anyway. The "summarizing" part, I don't know. I thought I did pretty well word for word if I could hear it. Now sometimes I know I need to work on listening comprehension-when someone tells a long story, to try to remember all the details, or get it all correct. I definitely need to work on it. When I've been listening only to Spanish for a long time it isn't so hard. I definitely speak better than I understand (orally). I usually understand everybody but sometimes I get something wrong, who was going where? Whose car, hers or his? That kind of stuff. But even so, in this case there wasn't so much to mix up. Even though there were a couple things I couldn't hear, especially at the beginning. So anyway, I do realize I need MORE TRAINING in that part of this so that I can get better at this in the future (simultaneous interpreting). Regular interpreting is much easier. But this is hard. So anyway who knows. I told Azza and will tell Gerry, and Azza confirms and totally supports me, that so many people ask FOR me, many companies request me back, that if these particular people don't want me back it's not big deal to me. Send someone else! By all means! I don't care! As long as it doesn't affect the other stuff I do. And I will try to practice much more, train much more, on SI. When I've done this with Claudio or Freddy as a team, things go well, when we take turns.

So sorry this is long-winded. Steve and I had our Arabic class and then I took the kids to Cece's. All for now. If you've made it through this epistle, I congratulate you. I don't know WHY you did it, because I'm sure you're utterly confused and bored.